kaelidascope - Tumblr blog

[kaelidascope]

So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

And that? That gives me hope for the future.

[kaelidascope]

Monster designing is fun cus you can make them look like naked mole rats while you're working on an anatomy that fits

[kaelidascope]

AUGH

THERE THEY ARE I'M SO HAPPY WITH THIS EPISODE I COULD CRY

[kaelidascope]

Hey Kaeli, so I just saw your post about the bonus content for Midnight Menagerie and its tags and I wanted to say something: if it's cringe to write fanfic of your own fanfic, then I guess it must be even more so to very much like the idea of reading it. Which I do. Is it cringe to be a fan? I don't know, I just embrace it.

If it's cringe, so be it, you're going to bee providing us with treats. Thanks! Even if it might mean it takes me even longer to catch up with Midnight Bees, I'm hardly about to complain about that. More tasty fic!

...I just noticed that bee typo, and it can stay because this is about Bee fic.

I did genuinely spend an obscene amount of time looking for the bee typo and got more excited than it was warranted when I found it.

I have this mindset cus I saw a few tweets once picking on long-fic writers and having obscenely humongous word counts for 1 AU :') I'm still apprehensive about doing some shit cus ppl get so mad about everything

Thank you so much for the support bestie 😭🙏

[kaelidascope]

I heard @ghoulsamgrusam 's call to arms and I'm here to deliver. So anyway is this anything chat LMAO cus if there's an audience for this I will 100% write this

Rated E for monster fucker (as usual), violence, on-par with Beestfic stuff. Apocalyptic virus/monster/survival AU

[kaelidascope]

Do you have any plans for a post mm fic, like seeing how everyone heals and moves on after the events of mm? Sorry I love this fic and would literally just read vignettes of the characters getting into shenanigans

I absolutely do <33

There will be an epilogue 3 chapter fic called What Happens In Menagerie set 2 years after the events of the Midnight Menagerie. This is entirely self-indulgent and fun and meant to be a nice wrap up after the absolute hell they're all about to go through LOL

Then there will be an anthology series called Midnight Forever which is a collection of short stories and removed scenes that didn't make the final cut set all over the timeline. It won't be posted in chronological order, but just as I write them, and I plan to leave it open-ended as the ideas come to me like a dumpster for MM prompts that are canon to the story but I couldn't squeeze into the official fic. There will be a timeline table of contents though at the front to help keep track which story goes where. Some future stories I've already written for it include;

Yang's first shooting lessons with Vernal

How Blake met Weiss and how they became roommates (and their first margarita girls night)

Blake's new career after the events of MM

A collection of filthy ass smut scenes that never made the original cut

The scene where Yang gets jumped by Adam's goons mentioned in chapter 9

Memories from Yang and Ruby's childhood both when Summer was alive and after she died

How Pyrrha and Weiss happened and some of their early escapades

Conflict revolving plot point revealed in the sequel and Blake and her issues

Adam and Blake context from the past (heavily tagged and skippable obviously)

And a lot more ideas that contain spoilers that I can't share <3 but I'm so not normal about this series I'll keep writing fanfic of my own fanfic if that's what it takes

[kaelidascope]

👀 wip

[kaelidascope]

Small Update:

next MM chapter might be a couple more weeks cus I'm in BG3 hell and I picked up some overtime to help prepare for the coming move in July. It's not dead I've just got limited free time for the time being sorryyyy

[kaelidascope]

just wanted to let you know I love mm yangs design so much I started to model my butch ass after her, getting my first undercut next week 🤞

OH MY GOOD I meant to reply to this sooner but this is a MASSIVE compliment and I love this so much for you 😭 GET THAT GENDER FAM YEEESSSSSSS I'm honored that MM Yang's design can serve as a blueprint!! 😭🙏🌺

[kaelidascope]

is that what "No more tears" means? After that past episode of 'love me thru this' ?????

Sort of! No More Tears originally comes from the song that played during their first kiss BUT the final chapter in the series is called No More Tears so <3 full circle eventually there will be no more tears

[kaelidascope]

Im spoiled because of your fic, like I'll go read another and be like "... wtf happened" it's so good, I should have started reading a different fic first so I could be even more appreciative of your writing

NAJSNAANJKJSNKAJ I'M SORRY but also that's a tremendous compliment thank you so much holy cow

Honestly anything in my bookmarked section are all fics I enjoyed and would recommend <3 if you're looking for something! It's mostly bees but I think there is one catradora and another ship in there that I forgot the name of (I don't go to that fandom but it was really good smut LOL)

[kaelidascope]

Hey! I'm not able to leave a comment on MM on AO3 but I just wanna say how much I love it and how amazing you are at writing!!! I can't wait for more!!! Thanks for writing it!

AW thank you!! I'm glad you're liking it so far!! Sorry about the non-guest comments, I was getting some uncomfy messages and I needed to regulate it lol but I'm glad you found me on here!!

[kaelidascope]

Oh this is absolutely unacceptable chat. We have to do something about this

[kaelidascope]

Chapter 20 Target Practice Promo wip

Gee they look like they're having a nice conversation don't they

[kaelidascope]

Boop! (I miss it too)

YOU

C'MERE

[kaelidascope]

I miss booping the fuck out of each other

[kaelidascope]

Where my BG3 girlies at

Featuring Lapis Studdmuffin (the real Absolute) and Pink Lemonade (the only bard in Bards Against Humanity, trademark pending)

Pink belongs to @twixstari